Sony’s PS4 sales surpass 91 million, but that number is slowing

Sony announced its financial earnings on Friday and despite some falling numbers elsewhere in the business, PS4 remains a strong seller for the company.

To wit, Sony says it sold 91.8 million consoles in total with around 8.1 million of those sales happening in the last three months.

This latest sales number is just slightly less than the total number of units shipped (94.2 million a the end of last quarter) and could represent an inflection point for the console, which sold 800,000 more units this time last year.

Despite the slowing sales number, however, Sony execs are still happy with how the PS4 is getting along. “Hardware sales dropped to 8.1 million units in the quarter, but that’s meeting our expectations for a console entering its sixth year,” chief financial officer Hiroki Totoki said in the earnings briefing.

The dawn of a new age

Even if Sony never sold another PS4, the console will have done better than the PS3 (83.8 million units sold), PSP (82 million units sold) and PS Vita (in between 10 and 15 million units sold). But, that being said, the PS4 still has a ways to go to overtake the original PlayStation (102.49 million units) and the highest-selling console ever made, the PS2, which sold over 155 million units in its lifetime.

In spite of the console's so-far excellent sales performance, the headwinds are changing and new consoles are rumored to be on the horizon.

To that end, we’ve heard rumors about Sony’s next console, which we've taken to calling the PS5, that’s supposed to make its debut sometime this year. Unlike in years past though, that unveiling won’t happen at E3, an event Sony has said it will forego this year.

It's hard to know when the right time is to launch a new console, but with PS4 sales starting to slow, now is as good a time as any to consider what comes next for Sony's console business.